Space. Depth. Power. Dynamics. Ferociousness. Sadness. Anger. Regret. Stillness. What to expect from a work that even from its first interaction tells a story simply through its song titles read in their descending order.
There is a certain folkloric mystery to the Polish metal scene. On one side of the Sudeten Mountains lore hangs like emaciated clouds of eating coal, walking like giants and speaking in differing tongues than the rest of their compatriots. On the other side of the crevasse in the land of Vader, Dies Irae and Non Opus Dei dwells an elusive beast of bitterness. Zasypia (“He Falls Asleep”), Gorycz’s third full-length outing, conjures a swirling, moody atmosphere that is equal parts the syncopated rhythms of a heart torn asunder and the vengeful bloodied hands of the body barely holding the ventricles in place.
The pulse of humanity at its bleakest. The elastic riffs bump and snap across a darkened room where light lays dormant, occasionally swinging around a concrete ceiling from where 20 tons of chains remorsefully hang. Perched on the hooks at the end of those metal appendages are the razorblade cymbals, the grime covered bass strings and the remains of Kukliński’s larynx.
Zasypia means business. If the dreams, the album embodied, were to hold prisoners of war, we’d see the pieces of their cognizance pressed into broken glass and barbed wire. The manic monologues in “Wybacza” (“Forgives”) upraise the album beyond any genre trope with sobering precision. There is a free-form seediness that pours out of the roar and buzz of this record. The light from this knife glints under the murky streetlamp. There is no safety here. Danger is beyond its heaving lurking trembling state. It has its grip around your neck, pressing, stifling your breaths in a thick smog of haze and steam from the rusted manholes.
The pristine production creates a singular dynamic contrast to the bawdiness of the performance and arrangement. It is a horror that you see in broad daylight, while the neighbors stare out from their doorways, looking on as the smoke from their cigarettes jig into the sky. For my złoty, this is the album of the year. To listen to in darkness, to experience in stillness, in the raptured comfort of the locked door, deep in the woods of a charred-out forgotten cabin where riddles lodge and death skulks everlasting.
